londongrip.co.uk
Welcome to London Grip, a forum for reviews of books, shows & events – plus quarterly postings of new poetry.
Our most recent posts are listed below. Older posts can be explored via the search box and topic list.
For more information & guidelines on submitting reviews or poems please visit our Home page.

May 30 2018

# London Grip New Poetry Summer 2018

*

This issue of London Grip features new poems by:

* Robert Etty *Mark Young *Rodney Wood *Peter Daniels *Jill Harris *Derek Adams
* Marion McCready *Robert Nisbet *Emma Neale *Pamela Job * Tim Love *Susannah Hart
* Ian C Smith *Gareth Culshaw * Dan Bennett * Anne Ballard * E Wen Wong *Phil Wood *
Lynne Hjelmgaard * Elizabeth Smither * Owen Gallagher * Norton Hodges
*Tom Sommerville * Rosemary Norman * Stephen Bone * Emma Lee *Jane Henderson
*Edmund Prestwich *Eric Nicholson * Michael McCarthy *Teoti Jardine *Jack Crow

Copyright of all poems remains with the contributors

Biographical notes on contributors can be found here

A printer-friendly version of London Grip New Poetry can be found at LG New Poetry Summer 2018

London Grip New Poetry appears early in March, June, September & December

Please send submissions (up to three poems plus a brief bio) to poetry@londongrip.co.uk
Poems should be either in one Word attachment or included in the message body

Our preferred submission windows are: December-January, March-April,
June-July and September-October

Editor’s notes

This edition of London Grip New Poetry appears almost a full year after the tragedy of the Grenfell Tower fire. This was such a public and shocking event that many of us hoped and believed it would mark a step change for the better in the current climate of unequally-applied austerity and inadequately-regulated outsourcing of public services. Jack Crow’s long poem “the burning room”, which we publish in this issue, can be seen as a cry of pain and frustration that there is still little evidence of such a change actually taking place. (There have, of course, been many other similar protests – for instance in the anthology Poems for Grenfell Tower from Onslaught Press and in Ruth Valentine’s chapbook A Grenfell Alphabet.)

To highlight one particular contribution is not of course to detract from the other fine poems in this issue. These include whimsically affectionate character sketches from Robert Etty and Jill Harris, reminiscent narratives by Elizabeth Smither and Michael McCarthy, intriguingly enigmatic items from Rodney Wood and Peter Daniels and a clutch of poems (Tom Sommerville, Rosemary Norman, Stephen Bone & Emma Lee) which explore what discarded clothing might say about its former wearers. With all this – and more – on offer we are sure our readers will find plenty to enjoy.

Michael Bartholomew-Biggs
London Grip poetry editor

Forward to first poem
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.

***

    Robert Etty: The Sun Shines On Miss Mikkelsen

    Miss Mikkelsen (whose single prospective Mister
    suddenly recalled a distant commitment)
    holds queues up practically every day.
    Shoppers who know come back ten minutes later
    to give her time to mis-slot a wrong card,
    or talk herself through what she wrote on the list
    that she didn’t bring in case she lost it.
    She enunciates in foul languages
    at drivers pulled up at traffic lights
    and jabs at the shape the day’s taken so far
    with her adjustable walking stick.

    If you live here you don’t bat an eyelid,
    but tend to believe at least one of the stories
    most locals can spin a version of,
    of her undercover translation role
    as a Trans World Airways air hostess,
    of chaperoning a princess’s daughter,
    PA-ing an elderly country-rock star
    and finally abandoning everything
    for a caravan and Marmite and eggs.

    Sun’s on the town’s red tiles this morning.
    The church peregrines are scouting for chick-food.
    Miss Mikkelsen’s baseball-capped and sockless,
    in Adidas pants to fit someone else,
    heading for the Post Office.  The next thing
    to do (but opinions will differ) is
    praise whatever it is you praise
    for the marvellous chance to see her en route,
    and even, for some, to queue behind her
    and wait as she fumbles two £2 coins
    from inside a mitten she needn’t be wearing
    and drops one that rolls underneath the pen rack.

Back to poet list… Forward to next poem
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.

***

    Mark Young: The mathematician, when single, is transformed into a retrospective meteorologist

    He gets the washing off the line
    noting, as always, the numbers
    of it. Five business shirts, two
    T-shirts, five pairs of socks &
    six pairs of underpants. There
    seems no balance to it; but then
    the meteorologist kicks in. Last
    Saturday was wet, so he /
    washed on Sunday & wore,
    while washing, T-shirt, jeans (which
    get washed at irregular intervals & so
    do not appear in this catalogue)
    & underpants. He went barefoot.
    Monday was hot, so off with
    the business shirt on getting home.

    That takes care of the irregularities.
    The remainder of the week was
    business as usual. It is too soon to
    tell what the weather was like today.

Back to poet list… Forward to next poem
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.

***

    Rodney Wood: Military Sketching And Map Reading

    sandwiches over Westminster Bridge / and I pass tourists dressed as birds of prey
    I walk with a briefcase containing books / sandwiches over Westminster Bridge
    I walk with a briefcase containing books / and I pass tourists dressed as birds of prey

    looking at the moon's reflection / twisted by the grey persuasive Thames
    I think of Wordsworth leaning over the railings / looking at the moon's reflection
    I think of Wordsworth leaning over the railings / twisted by the grey persuasive Thames

    I hide in an alcove of the old GLC building / a guard moves me along with a whip
    wind attacks with knives and hatpins / I hide in an alcove of the old GLC building
    wind attacks with knives and hatpins / a guard moves me along with a whip

    who just want to keep their head down / who want to rest after another disastrous day
    I walk on in the company of those / who just want to keep their head down
    I walk on in the company of those / who want to rest after another disastrous day

    showing strong arms outstretched / for those who died in the Spanish Civil War
    we end up in Jubilee Garden by the monument / showing strong arms outstretched
    we end up in Jubilee Garden by the monument / for those who died in the Spanish Civil War

    still I worry about war / its prey / I want to cry / to tear my face and hair
    I have no way to set the world aright / still I worry about war / its prey
    I have no way to set the world aright / I want to cry / to tear my face and hair

    italicised lines from Night In The Pavilion By The River, Tu Fu

Back to poet list… Forward to next poem
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.

***

    Peter Daniels: The New Chapel

    The good fight politely scrambles to a mahogany seat
              in the new octagonal chapel;
    the gas lamps by the windows are not a success,
              the heat has cracked the panes.
    The enemy has entered us for combat; hardened
              with inward and outward armour
    we sit in our varnished cabinets, each facing the minister,
              ready for wrong and right.

    The born preacher is trying out a new tone of voice,
              but his throat needs clearing.
    He grinds his teeth at the unconvinced saint,
              the one in the way of the Lord;
    his mouth is full of the pulpit's corners. But other times
              his face could be seen to turn
    the sourest wine to the most cordially welcome
              beverage of righteousness.

    The great adversary turns the other buttock, and we
              sing our judgement to the gallery.
    The low but mighty in convincement take up
              a mystic vengeance on sin;
    we begin the long mornings of flattening prayer,
              the evenings of rising for praise,
    for the power that shall have settled forever
              the works of the unsatisfactory.

Back to poet list… Forward to next poem
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.

***

    Jill Harris: Nativity
    In memory of Joy Morgan

    A dropped stitch has appeared in Joseph’s beard.
    The shepherds wobble on their Velcro dots.
    The sheep is oversized, the donkey,
    rabbit-like, stands by a fox
    head bowed, as if bewildered
    by the faces peering into
    the hay-lined cardboard box.

    The faces light up, one by one,
    like sensors on a drive, or stars
    in a dusk sky, breaking into smiles.
    Age may have lodged them in
    this nursing home, this wintry afternoon,
    but their time-travelling souls have always known
    the order of events: The journey over miles
    to find a refuge in a cattle barn.
    The angels, clambering through the sky,
    dispensing grace. The dazzled shepherds,
    traipsing across fields
    to find the newborn in his milky den,
    the baby Jesus, focus of all eyes –
    everyone adored a baby, even then.

    The wise men came much later. Here
    they stand majestic, boldly clutching
    knitted gifts: a purple box, a bag, a plate of gold.

    Our eyes are drawn to this nativity.
    The knitted people in their box of hay
    light up the room. Their maker stands
    and smiles, accepting praise
    as eighty years ago she would endure
    a birthday cake, or Sunday school class prize.

    She did not know it was her final gift –
    not just the knitting but acknowledging
    her own part in the scene, then letting go –

    the months of stitching to remind us how
    a greater maker always visits us
    in wrappings we provide
    translating cardboard hay and wool
    into light and colours like a jewel,

    who asks us to stand up, be seen
    and when we least expect it, slip away.

Back to poet list… Forward to next poem
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.

***

    Derek Adams: Like Icarus

    After all that wobbling,
    grazed knees and elbows,
    do you remember that feeling?

    Suddenly everything felt right
    and you took off down the road,
    not looking back.

    Derek Adams: A Black Hole Where Once There Was the Sun
    Abstract Composition (Portrait of Lee Miller) by Roland Penrose (England, 1946)

    A heart imploding
    under its own weight,
    orbited by disjointed limbs.

    Cries from distant
    battlefields
    echo in my head.

    Images trapped
    in a viewfinder
    the shutter can't release.

    The act of capturing light
    now just floods
    darkness in

    it travels along my veins
    those lines of gravity
    that stop the dead moon

    of my being from floating
    off into the vacuum
    surrounding me.

Back to poet list… Forward to next poem
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.

***

    Marion McCready: March Snow
    for Sorley & Andrew

    The road is foreign - the ground hidden,
    walls have grown white heads; snow bodies
    not children play on the swings.

    In the car park, cars are ghostly forms
    hunched next to each other
         like armadillos.

    A boy in yellow and a boy in blue,
    each of them armed with a shovel. They do a snow dance
    on the driveway - scooping up the soft inches

    and flinging them into the garden. The snow
    itself follows its own choreography - fluttering
    through the air like a kaleidoscope

    of cabbage white butterflies,
    oblivious to the coming rain.

Back to poet list… Forward to next poem
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.

***

    Robert Nisbet: The Hardy Annuals

    In the clumps and ridges where I usually look,
    the daffodil buds are pushing.
    Many days are cold and rainy,
    but so many of us will say, in a quiet drone,
    that it’s not the cold we mind, it’s the damp
    (just as we’ll tell you, in July,
    it’s not the heat we mind so much,
    it’s the humidity).

    The one Syrian family will be introduced
    and everyone will smile and like them,
    but later, in a back bar’s corner
    (as with the Japanese students in the College
    and the Filipino nurses), several will say,
    That’s fine, but we’re a small island.
    In April, the showers can give way
    to the sunset’s unexpected radiance.

    Summer will bring hot sport,
    turf and trophies. Media. Tears.
    We’ll say, it’s character, commitment.
    We’ll praise the will to win.
    Some days, on Broad Haven’s beach, the air,
    the sun and the stillness will coincide
    in such a summer rightness that we are left
    breathless by the good of it.

    There will be exam results,
    and grades and shrieks and hugs,
    before the descent again to winter
    and the abuse of referees.
    But we will know that a few times
    there will be one of those days
    when the cold, the crispness and a winter sun
    cohere in the truly crystalline.

Back to poet list… Forward to next poem
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.

***

    Emma Neale: A Room that Held the Sea
    (A ‘2-tina’)

    Over cocktails, perhaps, or card games, or at book-club in the shared  day-room
    in the small port town retirement home, although on a street with no view of the sea,

    a woman told my grandfather of the day she walked into the room
    where her mother wept and rocked, as if on a deck on a wind-lashed sea,
    half-crazed with disbelief, barely aware she was in her own living-room.
    Living-room itself sounded almost crass, as its corners seeped with a red-blind sea
    despair's deep tide staining mouth and mind so its curse fixed the image of that room
    for good, for worse, in the young girl's memory. Through it she could never again
                                                                                                                                                 truly see
    this spring-kindled world; five words nailed up their own dank room,
    they rang bitter-clear: 'It should have been you.' Her mother forgivably at sea;
    yet cruel — unforgivably. Kinder to have denied entry to that plunging room
    where she tried to drag back from shock's current, treacherous as a rip at sea;
    back from the news that sucked all light from the room.
    One young daughter drowned while swimming in an easy summer's sea.
    The other stood, hair still tangle-damp, limbs glittered with tawny sand,  a dozen
                                                                                                                                                rooms
    in the wish-castle of self slammed shut: turned dust-patinaed ghost embassy.
    Even at 93, once-translator, ex-diplomat's widow, her smile a tern's quick tilt in the
                                                                                                                                  sky's vast room,
    she swore her life story was, 'My sister died. My mother wished it was me.'
    Eyes grey as wake on winter seas;
    family love a lost Atlantis: anoxic as cold marbled rooms, undersea.

Back to poet list… Forward to next poem
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.

***

    Pamela Job: Dear Ocean

    Dear Ocean, do you remember that girl –
    she was a girl, she was so much younger
    than I ever was, in that summer moment
    when the world was blue as the Virgin’s
    robe. And gold as her tears. Dear Ocean,
    bring back the girl, foot-free, dressed
    in shells with ravens nesting in her hair.

    Dear Ocean, you could have taken her then
    in the light that made everything blind-eyed
    in the heat that warmed her thoughts until
    they fell stunned on the sand – you could
    have taken her, but you washed her feet instead,
    blistered, hard-soled from running over rocks.
    The ravens have flown, now I am ready, dear Ocean.

Back to poet list… Forward to next poem
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.

***

    Tim Love: Dark Matter

    We know it's there because it slows us down.
    Everything clings. It's a missing term
    in an old equation, or undiscovered regrets.
    Call it love if it helps. Don't bother removing
    the metaphors - it'll only become one big metaphor.

    Instead, remember how da Vinci bought caged birds
    just to release them. In the British Library
    I research like a crow eating roadkill,
    becoming roadkill before I can free words from silence.
    There's a recipe book about roadkill isn't there?

    Don't go. You know how bad my memory is.
    My past will disappear with you. I'll try
    to move my temple stone by numbered stone,
    but when one man's left, there's no belief,
    just a symbol that people can't let go of.

    You understand, don't you. Surely we can
    work this out. Ok, let's eat first.

Back to poet list… Forward to next poem
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.

***

    Susannah Hart: Becoming

    Boy, you have been leaving for some time now,
    slipping out of primary colours into grey and shade.
    Yes, you’ve been changing, stretching from
    the small and the specific upwards and away.
    You are graduating to generalities. Through
    the front door’s frosted glass you’re unrecognisable
    and your mother looks too low for your face
    when she answers the bell, your key forgotten
    again. You’re impossible, impossible to hold
    back, implausibly agile for one so clumsy,
    so deft at departures.  She has tried to pin you into
    photographs and school magazines but you wriggle
    out of them, casting only a slight reflection.
    Boy, there’s a word for what you’re becoming
    and your mother is afraid to speak it out loud.

Back to poet list… Forward to next poem
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.

***

    Ian C Smith: Boomerang Days

    Under gums, I faced south, he faced north,
    a cotton bud sky, zephyr cool.
    We kicked the football back and forth,
    prelude to his trip to school.

    Water pooled around a pump,
    cows watched from steaming yards,
    his bag I’d shouldered crowned a stump,
    cut lunch, drink bottle, football cards.

    I heard a distant tractor start,
    no bus sound yet, due half-past.
    Odour of grass wrenching the heart,
    our kick-to-kick time passed too fast.

    We heard the bus’s engine sigh,
    driver’s horn-tap, starting to slow.
    Kookaburras chorused way up high,
    cacophony’s echo, sun still low.

    Parting ways I touched his hair
    as he skipped aboard sparked by sport.
    I bounced his ball home past our mare,
    days everlasting, so I thought.

Back to poet list… Forward to next poem
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.

***

    Gareth Culshaw: I Had Stayed A Couple Of Nights

    I left today. The cottage pie
    had settled in me like the evening
    sun on a sea. I didn’t know who
    to look at and kept my eyes
    away. My rucksack was heavier
    than when I got here. The dog
    sniffed eagerly for the outside
    but my hand hadn’t reached
    for the handle. I stood for a moment
    like it was the day when I did leave
    When the umbilical was cut by
    a tongue. It was for the best back then.
    But today I stand knowing
    the next step will start to create
    a shadow. When something dark
    falls away from you and follows
    you everywhere. I’m not sure
    I want it trailing behind me anymore.

Back to poet list… Forward to next poem
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.

***

    Dan Bennett: R's Story

    She wakes from the afternoon,
    into amnesia's logic. A thin light,
    from some distant window,
    her eyelids beating movement
    into the quiet. And each step
    is a stealthy trip into what
    she no longer knows. A radio offers
    to return her to the ordinary
    but any dream has more sense
    than this cold awakening
    as she teeters in the space
    between words and their things.
    The strangeness of a home
    without family amazes her, the feel
    of woodgrain beneath her touch,
    that precise colour of grey paint.
    A mirror faces her with level accuracy
    the deadpan response of an old friend.
    Those seconds will remain
    as the past resumes its dialogue
    like a glass breaking in the night,
    like a dream told in passing
    like the neighbour yesterday
    who brought news of death with him
    and she had so much sadness
    that she wanted to cross the street.

    Dan Bennett: Booksellers

    In those days, I learned to read the look
    in booksellers' eyes: daring, forbidding
    but desperate for me, really.
    In their expressions I saw the gaze

    of dolorous taxi drivers, protecting
    knowledge like a rare rooftop bird,
    the women fronting clip joints
    in Old Compton St. I'll be honest:

    I never knew what a clip joint was,
    but people said to avoid them, how they
    put a price on lust and loneliness
    monetised the pitiable. The booksellers, too,

    priced me up as I pinged their bells,
    smelling desperation in my browsing,
    the amateur theatre of my enquiries.
    Their eyelids sliced away at me:

    I'll show him death on credit, I'll show him
    gunslinger I'll show him hunger,
    I'll show him a la recherche de temps perdu.
    They knew what I tried to prove,

    but where else could I go
    and who else did they have? We faced off
    divided by our patient temporality,
    our permanently arrested escapes.

Back to poet list… Forward to next poem
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.

***

    Anne Ballard: A Long Drive in January

    Pewter and lead today’s colours:
    puddles bulge, oily,
    sluggish as mercury.
    Sky lours, crushes the land,
    exhaust fumes foul drenched air.
    No dawn today.

    Car headlamps,
    brightest things in the world.
    Street lights and signs
    cast long reflections
    of colours that screech
    down soaked asphalt.

    Slanting rain, splattered
    by gusts of wind; metronome
    beat of windscreen wipers
    front and rear.
    Hooded figures stoop
    into the face of the rain.

    I drive in a tunnel of light
    through no man’s land, alone
    to the edge of the world.

Back to poet list… Forward to next poem
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.

***

    E Wen Wong: A Moment in the Castle

    You walk into emptiness.
    Across the surface,
    puddles form
    in the dips in concrete.
    The smell of old leaves
    resonates through the air
    they are rusting,
    well past autumn.

    Ahead, a castle,
    one you believe
    to be abandoned.
    It appears dark and gloomy
    like the stickmen trees
    which stand before it,
    a signal to tell you
    that you are unwelcome.

    I am a soul bound
    in the smallest crevice
    of the castle,
    the one surrounded
    by ominous fragmented clouds.
    It is abandoned,
    the peaks piercing
    through the skin of the sky.

    Statues line the entrance:
    the markers which precede
    the pathway  towards my soul.
    The grass, a dull green,
    malnourished,
    yet a spark against the castle’s
    black and white theme.

    I am embodied by darkness.
    I am darkness.
    The shadows hide
    deep within the castle,
    beckoning for anyone to enter,
    to sweep beyond my exterior.

Back to poet list… Forward to next poem
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.

***

    Phil Wood: Bubble

    Her leg
    stretches above
    the foam, slowly turning
    the hot water tap
    with her toes.
    It is performance.
    A ballet in mirrors, a moist
    adagio for solitude.
    She opens her book and reads.

Back to poet list… Forward to next poem
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.

***

    Lynne Hjelmgaard: It was the day they put the clocks back
     (Torbay Station)
     Time was away and somewhere else. -  Louis MacNiece

    Minutes were not wasted with you dear Poet,
    who called himself a Welshman and a Jew –

    whose elder charm and youthful spirit rose
    in the excitement of the rush.

    We drank our builder’s tea at the platform café
    busy speaking of our past lives

    when the waitress removed the clock…
    In the train back to London

    we sat shoulder to shoulder, poem to poem.
    The girl in the seat across the aisle

    watched us intently, her gaze and smile
    lingered longer on yours.

    I hardly knew you, yet had pangs of jealousy and
    still in grief for my own lost spouse, later wrote:

    give me him young or give me him old,
    is he writing me now as I write of him?

Back to poet list… Forward to next poem
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.

***

    Elizabeth Smither: The man who wanted to stroke my hair

    The St Kilda tram. Bright summer air. Breeze
    through the window gap, stirring
    all manner of motes, tendrils of  hair
    lifting their traces on my neck. Fine hairs
    of a different sort, underneath. Antennae
    not needed for action on a tram.

    A hand touches my shoulder, gently.
    A confidant’s hand, a psychiatrist
    or alternative therapist: The Role of Hair
    just accepted as a learnèd paper. ‘May
    I stroke your hair?’ the whisper in my ear.

    NO, came the answer before I considered it
    then odd thoughts,  like running nits (not
    that I had those, even at school). Then
    How many times?’ and ‘Where would you begin?’
    Obviously from the crown; the hand would settle
    and then begin its slide. My hair was thick, golden
    (my aunts all had it, with a natural wave
    as it descended, almost a Marcel, no
    salon needed). The tram stopped. I looked
    ahead. The man got off, the breeze
    caressed crown and neck all the way home.

    Elizabeth Smither: The girl with the dog made of cigarettes

    Making a tower of leaning cards
    turning cigarette packets into a dog
    a girl in a velvet jacket and pleated skirt
    carries in the street. Above her head

    hangs her mother’s handbag. The Pall Mall dog
    looks up and down the street. Air flows
    through its body, the gap-spaced teeth,
    nonetheless it guards the girl who holds it

    sometimes by a rear leg, sometimes its torso
    like a clutch purse. An accessory for the well-
    dressed girl shopping with her mother. On a shop
    counter the cigarette dog sneaks a rest as if

    smoke from old cigarettes and stubbed-out butts
    escapes through its slits. Smoking helps
    you relax and gives the hands something other
    than a fumble. The little girl who wears red

    boots to match the cigarette packets knows to
    hold something is halfway to confidence. ‘A dog!’
    someone exclaims as she thrusts its muzzle forward.
    ‘How cute, how darling. But don’t start smoking yet.’

    Toy dogs made of cigarette packets were popular in the heavy-smoking decades of the 1940s and 1950s

    Check out ‘cigarette packet dog’ on google

Back to poet list… Forward to next poem
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.

***

    Owen Gallagher: Where Trees Didn’t Leaf
    South Side Sawmills, Glasgow

    Sawdust fell when passers-by shook their heads,
    dossers scooped it up to skin with tobacco,
    birds dived, and soared with curly shavings.

    Hardwood and softwood trunks, from Borneo
    to Brazil, shipped to the sawmills, were laid out
    like handmade cigars and left to season in yards

    for cladding, clothes pegs and coffins. Workers
    debated the origins of trees by smell and touch,
    feared fingers sawn off, backs snapped.

    I swept up sacks of sawdust, heaved them onto
    trucks to line the nation’s pet cages, and for barmen
    and school janitors to scatter over vomit.

    The old hands told stories of gangsters driven here
    by rivals at night, reduced to slices of meat sold
    from a dodgy butcher’s van. I eased my nerves

    with Bounty bars longing for the whining
    and grinding of saws to cease as I stepped between
    creaking log piles dreading the scream: ‘Timber!’

Back to poet list… Forward to next poem
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.

***

    Norton Hodges: I Remember BHS

    It was a cut above Woolworths but cheaper than Marks.
    Now I walk down the High Street and BHS is boarded up
    so that the pillaged inside is invisible.
    People worked here. Shoppers looked for the Winceyette and the Crimplene
    they couldn’t find elsewhere.
    The men’s department tried hard to be trendy.
    In the café, lunchtime diners enjoyed fish and chips
    or shepherd’s pie with a nice cup of tea.
    It was part of a safe and regular life.

    Except that behind the scenes
    money moved into pockets
    and certain people got richer, bought yachts,
    financed their children’s schooling and their wine cellars,
    Behind the façade of the façade there were puppet masters,
    there was shadow play,

    and the ordinary people they saw as units,
    as ants, as footfall, as bodies per square metre,
    had to go elsewhere for their sleeveless pullovers
    and warm vests,

    shunted out of the everyday,
    they were suddenly aware of a wider world,
    a world that was bottomless, unfathomable,

    without locality, stolen by hucksters through sleight of hand,

    while the abandoned shops now,

    if only we could see inside,

    would be echoing, cavernous,

    empty except for some ripped packaging

    and the bones of dead coat hangers.

Back to poet list… Forward to next poem
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.

***

    Tom Sommerville: Clearing Out

    My clothes hang meekly on the wardrobe rail
    and form a bunch of snaps of what I was:
    the striped ties of my formal days of toil;
    the flowered number, like a long lost cause
    from when black hair cascaded down my neck;
    the suits now kept for funerals and weddings;
    some antique shirts would better deck
    a case in a museum. All need shredding.
    What do they tell me now about my life,
    these dumb participants? They seem a thin
    memento of an average of grief,
    a mean of happiness; of mediocre sin.
    My wife is startled as I think, out loud,
    That flasher’s raincoat might do me for a shroud.

Back to poet list… Forward to next poem
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.

***

    Rosemary Norman: Dimensions Variable

    Put it on.

    Off the hook
    your shoulders hold it

    square
    and the sleeves

    grow complex and
    co-operative, no mere

    dangle but full
    of potential. Let it

    have a wearer
    or at least

    the semblance of one.
    Let it not slump

    into those shapes
    that give a mortal look

    to logs or bin-bags.
    Otherwise let it hang

    up on its hook, all
    symmetry and rectitude.

Back to poet list… Forward to next poem
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.

***

    Stephen Bone: Glove

    It lay in the pub's doorway,
    an elegant, boneless hand.

    Palm upwards
    in a gesture of supplication,

    fingers reaching out, useless
    on its own.

    Or perhaps

    an iron fist,
    now rid of its velvet glove.

    Enough is enough. The gauntlet
    thrown down.

Back to poet list… Forward to next poem
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.

***

    Emma Lee: These were someone's shoes
    After a photograph, photographer unknown

    Red shoes evoke dance but these are strapless stilettos,
    left on a railway sleeper as if their wearer, a cross
    between Victoria Page and Cinderella, had danced off
    with impatience after the train had failed to show,
    long after the audience of commuters had left
    an empty station as a stage and silence as a score.
    Not that silence would have mattered, a dancer
    carries music: an echo of rehearsal, an earworm
    from the earlier party, the rhythm of an expected train,
    to which aching, shoe-pinched feet were compelled
    to respond, forcing their wearer to place her shoes
    here and move off, gliding along the rails, tapping
    over sleepers to avoid splinters, journeying home
    as the shoes stay, empty and evocative and red.

Back to poet list… Forward to next poem
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.

***

    Jane Henderson: gone

    when I come in from work there is a note on the kitchen table
    in your hand. I perceive the word ‘gone’; small word in lower
    case. you’re good at gone/it is familiar. why bother even to
    write it when we both know it like a dog nudging our sides.
    I wonder how cold the night will be with me in the bed alone.
    you will be moving past green fields, probably too quickly to
    see where they are divided. the lines blur. and I’m here at the
    curtain with the same view.

    you didn’t take your watch and it pips on the hour. the clocks
    have moved on and you think you’ll have more light. here in
    the house there’s gloom but still I find a fish scale on the tiled
    floor and can’t dispose of it when it adheres to my hand.
    driving on the carriageway you’ll cover more distance in spite
    of the slant rain. probably you won’t wear your glasses and
    you’ll neglect to indicate. at some point you might find what
    I wrote but it won’t hit home.

Back to poet list… Forward to next poem
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.

***

    Michael McCarthy: Tell the Truth and Shame the Devil

    Whenever mud was found on the stairs, or a handle
    Knocked off of a cup. Or the gate of the haggard
    Not closed and the cows getting into the spuds.
    Or the hen house door left open all night for the fox.

    How in-the-name-a-God did the horse get into the loft?
    Who was it drove the wrong sow into the farrowing pin?
    Who ate a hole out of the bottom of the Christmas cake
    Before it was cut? Come now, tell the truth and shame the devil.

    			*

    He bought them out of half-a-crown Peter Brien gave him.
    I saw the bulge in his pocket where he hung his coat.
    My hand brushed against it by accident, I heard a rustle.
    I was trying to find out what it was when a toffee fell out.
    I was trying to put it back when it slipped into my mouth.
    It tasted like honey from the combs my uncle found
    In the cornfield, where the scythe had cut off the top.
    I tried another to see if it tasted the same, and it did.
    So I tried one more, and then one more after that.

    It wasn’t stealing. I gave some to my other brother
    To see what he made of them. He said they were nice.
    So I couldn’t have been stealing, and I didn’t tell a lie.
    I examined my tongue in the looking glass and there was
    No sign of a black spot. I told the truth and shamed the devil.
    But my brother said the only devil I shamed was myself.

Back to poet list… Forward to next poem
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.

***

    Edmund Prestwich: Dante In The Garden
    “These wretches, who were never alive”, Dante, Inferno III

    Frost on the grass, shrill birds,
    another jet climbing slowly
    through dawn-pink cloud. I imagined
    the man whose book I’d been reading
    in a scarlet gown sitting
    under our leafless pear.
    Four more months till April
    covered it with flowers
    and children spread soft toys
    on a warm rug. His face
    was hollow, bone
    pushing out through the skin.
    I tried to speak but he
    looked through me. Maybe all
    he saw, even now,
    was the hell he couldn’t leave
    or I imagine, my mind shying
    from the damned souls crawling
    out of the earth, labouring
    through blind tunnels, pushing
    the maimed on trolleys, praying
    to see the stars again,
    to stand up, blinded by light,
    as if this cold fenced garden
    were paradise. Perhaps
    to him I was one of those
    he’d seen by the first river;
    the dead who were never alive,
    chasing a blank banner,
    despised by heaven and hell.

Back to poet list… Forward to next poem
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.

***

    Eric Nicholson: The Judge's Skin

    I enjoyed the feel of hot sun when
    moisture would evaporate
    and leave tangy salt behind.
    Scant hair stood to attention in cool breezes,
    rain ran in rivulets downwards.
    I thought he was comfortable in me.

    I'd keep sin out and enemies at bay.
    I was a part of him, a living organ.
    I always accommodated his deathly sentences,
    I had no say when I stretched around yellow teeth.
    As I cushioned his snapping jaws I crawled.

    When I was sliced away from him
    I fell on the floor in slack strips.
    Someone collected my flayed bits
    and carried them across the room.
    They saw fit to shape me into a chair.
    They told his son to sit on me. Not under.
    I did all I could to accommodate his weight.
    I felt a heaviness I'd not felt before.

Back to poet list… Forward to next poem
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.

***

    Teoti Jardine: I Hear the Crying

    as I look around my writing room.

    This is my Grandfather’s oak roll top desk with its
    high curved back chair we children spun on.

    On the desk sits photographs of my Mum and Dad. He holds the reins of
    his horse beneath its chin, a look of respect and admiration upon his face.

    The horse standing securely in its strength looks past him
    towards the camera where in sepia tones this moment is captured.

    My Mother in a Photographers Studio wears a dress that gives her eyes
    a twinkle, letting the whole world know she shyly knows she’s beautiful.

    Above the desk a painting commissioned by the Community. A farewell gift
    when Dad sold the farm and we moved down South.

    It shows the Stable, the Shearers Quarters, the peaks of the mountain range.
    This view Mum saw as she waved goodbye to Dad, to us kids off to the school bus

    My ever growing collection of books line the walls and above them are more
    photographs, posters, artworks and Aboriginal paintings.

    A photograph of the Pandora II a research vessel I’d sailed on up the Davis Strait
    past ice bergs where we looked South to see the Northern Lights playing.

    The front cover of the Kumara Vine shows the dead Humpback Whale
    washed up on Pareora beach with my poem honouring it.

    Every room in my house displays memories made manifest. They have become
    my Korowai, my Cloak that wraps itself around me and allows me to

    hear the crying. The crying of the dead, the dying, the starving, the refugees.
    The mountains, the rivers, the land and seas lend their voices too.

    My korowai allows me to hear, and turn towards the crying.

Back to poet list… Forward to next poem
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.

***

    Jack Crow: Extracts from “the burning room”
    For the first anniversary of the Grenfell Tower fire

    turn back    to the flats
    turn back    to the fire
    turn back    to the nightmare
    there

    climb the burning stairs
    to where the moon and stars
    are near

    climb the sky to the 23rd floor
    to the door
    of those about to die

    go in

    wait
    in the blazing heat
    in the blazing grief

    sit
    with those about to lose their lives
    those soon to die
    in pain in pain
    in pain and fear
    right now and here

    take me back    to the tower
    take me back    to the fire
    take me back    to my neighbour

    take me to your room
    your living room
    your burning room...

    with books and a blazer   a sofa and a freezer

    take me to the window
    where
    you look down to the ground
    and at the impossible drop
    below
    and you scream    to the earth below
    so soft so cool
    like ice cream

    as every way
    away from here
    like stairs or lifts or sheets tied together
    or anything that hope can bring
    is burnt away
    till now there is nothing
    now
    but suffering
    this is where you   burn
    where your skin     blister
    where you cough and choke
    let me sit with you my sister
    as the smoke rise and the slow fire
    close us down

    let me stay beside you
    as you burn…

    and

    those feet
    that in ancient times
    walked on England's mountains green
    and
    that holy lamb of God
    that was in England's pastures
    seen
    be here and now
    please
    be here and now

    it's love
    it’s love
    it's only ever
    love
    that can
    face death
    that can
    transform
    the face of death
    as every breath defends our right to love
    as every grain of every bone that stands for love
    is made of love

    love as real
    as wood
    as fierce as steel
    as binding as our ligaments

    let me sit with you my sister as you die
    let me stay beside you past the pain
    let me stay

    till at last
    from your burning bones
    your soul can emerge
    at last
    can turn    to a bird
    can fly        away

    and at the window now
    i count you out
    the people of the tower
    my sisters, brothers, cousins,
    each and every one
    I count you out
    into the night
    the silent night

    and in the morning
    the smoking tower
    is joining
    earth and sky

    and in the morning
    on the streets around
    the have’s
    who have
    and go on
    having
    are joining
    the have nots
    who have not

    and the door  between
    the rich and poor
    is just
    a bit
    ajar

    and all of us who saw the fire that came to claim our neighbours
    will remember

    and in the morning
    and as we sort through the wreckage
    looking for the cause
    as we gather the facts
    the answer is simple

    it's tax

    tax is a river
    it flows from the mountains
    it flows down the slopes
    where the rich grow
    it flows through the fertile
    valleys below

    it flows down
    to the dry and desert plains
    to water there
    the hope
    of all the people there

    so
    if your money from your ancient family
    or made
    by your own amazing industry
    by your individual brilliance
    or just by the sweat of your brow
    is too precious to share
    with the poor
    of here
    and now

    then maybe today
    if not everyday
    i will rise like a corpse
    i will say
    it is better
    that you had never
    been born...

    take me back
    to the flats
    take me back
    to the fire

    take me back
    every night
    to the tower
    on fire

    take me back   to the flats
    take me back   to the fire
    take me back   every night
    to the tower on fire
    to watch again the souls of those
    who lose their lives
    go    to the skies
    go again to heaven   or the stars
    or all the places where the dead they go

    watch them go   like birds
    and weep   and sob
    and let light shine on them

    may the fire   of the poor
    in the burning tower
    change the world for ever

     and in the morning
    we wait for the morning   when
    in spring
    the birds will come back to the flats and will bring

    rain
    and song
    and green

Back to poet list…
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.

***
.
Derek Adams is a professional photographer. Originally from London, he now lives in Suffolk. He has an MA in Creative and Life Writing from Goldsmiths and his poems have appeared in magazines and anthologies in the UK and abroad including Rialto, Magma, Smiths Knoll and London Grip. He has a collection Everyday Objects, Chance Remarks (Littoral, 2005) and pamphlets Postcards to Olympus and unconcerned but not indifferent: the life of Man Ray.

Anne Ballard lives in Edinburgh. Her poems have appeared in Acumen, Magma, The Interpreter’s House and elsewhere. She won first prize in the Poetry on the Lake Competition 2015. Her pamphlet Family Division was published by in 2015.

Dan Bennett was born in Shropshire and lives and works in London. His poems have been published in numerous places, including Atrium, Eyeflash, Prole, and Under The Radar. His chapbook Arboreal Days is published by Red Ceilings Press.

Stephen Bone‘s work has appeared in magazines in the U.K. and U.S. and in various anthologies.First collection, In The Cinema ( Playdead Press ) 2014 and Plainsong ( Indigo Dreams Publishing ) 2018.

Jack Crow has spent a lot of years trying to find a “voice”. Maybe three years ago he found a voice and now it doesn’t seem to want to shut up. Among many things Jack works as a van driver to make money.

Gareth Culshaw lives in Wales. His first collection is published by futurecycle. he hopes to achieve something special with the pen

Peter Daniels has two poetry collections, Counting Eggs (Mulfran Press, 2012) and A Season in Eden (Gatehouse Press, 2016). His translations of Vladislav Khodasevich from Russian appeared from Angel Classics in 2013.

Robert Etty’s latest collection, Passing the Story Down the Line (Shoestring Press), was reviewed in London Grip in 2017.

Owen Gallagher was born of Irish parents in the Gorbals area of Glasgow. He now lives in London and was a Primary Teacher in Southall. His previous publications are: Sat Guru Snowman, Peterloo Poets, Tea with the Taliban, Smokestack Books, and A Good Enough Love, Salmon Poetry, Ireland, 2015, which was nominated for the T.S.Eliot award.

Jill Harris lives and works in Bristol, and has been scribbling from an early age.

Susannah Hart is a London-based poet who is on the board of Magma and is the co-editor of Magma 70 on the theme of Europe. She also works as a brand consultant. Her poetry has been widely published in magazines and online, and her first collection Out of True is due to be published by Live Canon later this year.

Jane Henderson is a gardener and sculptor. She is a member of Suffolk Poetry Society.

Lynne Hjelmgaard‘s third collection A Boat Called Annalise was published with Seren in 2016. She is working on a new mss called A Second Whisper

Norton Hodges is a poet, translator and editor. His poems have been widely published in the UK. His recent collection Bare Bone (the High Window Press, 2018) represents 20 years work. He lives in Lincoln.

Teoti Jardine is of Maori, Irish and Scottish descent. His tribal affiliations are Waitaha, Kati Mamoe and Kai Tahu. He completed the Hagley Writers Course 2011 and has had poetry published in The Press, London Grip, JAAM, Ora Nui, Te Karaka, Aotearotica, and short stories with Flash Frontier. He was guest editor for the Pasifika Issue of Flash Frontier March 2018. He lives with his dog Amie in a lovely old house in Linwood, Chirstchurch.

Pamela Job has been writing poetry for 10 years and has helped run Poetry Wivenhoe, a live poetry event, for most of that time. She has won various awards, the Crabbe Memorial Prize twice and, most recently, second prize in the Magma magazine competition. She is published in magazines and anthologies and is involved in a four year Project inspired by the Wilfred Owen Memorial in northern France. She finds poets and poetry very exciting.

Emma Lee‘s most recent collection is Ghosts in the Desert (IDP, 2015), she co-edited Over Land, Over Sea: poems for those seeking refuge (Five Leaves, 2015), reviews for The High Window Journal, The Journal, London Grip and Sabotage Reviews and blogs at http://emmalee1.wordpress.com

Tim Love lives in Cambridge, UK. His poetry and prose have appeared in Stand, Rialto, Magma, Short Fiction, New Walk, etc. He blogs at http://litrefs.blogspot.com/

Michael Mc Carthy is an Irish born poet living in Yorkshire. A winner of the Patrick Kavanagh Award, his most recent book The Healing Station, was chosen by Hilary Mantel as her Guardian Book of the year. A new collection, The Bright Room and Other Poems, is due from The Poetry Business in October 2018.

Marion McCready lives in Dunoon, Argyll. She is the author of two poetry collections – Tree Language (Eyewear Publishing, 2014) and Madame Ecosse (2017).

Emma Neale lives in Dunedin and is the current editor of Landfall. Her fifth poetry collection, Tender Machines, was long-listed in the 2016 Ockham New Zealand Book Awards, and her most recent novel, Billy Bird, is long-listed in the International Dublin Literary Awards.

Eric Nicholson is retired and lives in the NE of England. He is published online and by Sydney Samizdat Press, Sydney, Australia, and also has a manuscript about Blake & Buddhism awaiting a publisher. He blogs at https://ericleo.wordpress.com

Robert Nisbet is a Pembrokeshire poet who doesn’t see himself as unduly competitive, but who has recently won the Prole Pamphlet Competition. His winning collection, Robeson, Fitzgerald and Other Heroes is published by Prolebooks.

Rosemary Norman was born in London and has worked mainly as a librarian. Shoestring Press published her third collection, For example, in 2016. With video artist Stuart Pound, she makes films with poems as image, soundtrack and sometimes both. See them on Vimeo

Edmund Prestwich has published two collections, Through the Window with Rockingham Press and Their Mountain Mother with Hearing Eye. He grew up in South Africa, but finished his education in England and has spent his working life teaching English at the Manchester Grammar School.

Ian C Smith’s work has appeared in, Antipodes, Australian Book Review, Australian Poetry Journal, Critical Survey, Prole, The Stony Thursday Book, & Two-Thirds North. His seventh book is wonder sadness madness joy, Ginninderra (Port Adelaide). He writes in the Gippsland Lakes area of Victoria, and on Flinders Island, Tasmania.

Elizabeth Smither’s latest collection of poetry, Night Horse was published by Auckland University Press in 2016.

Tom Sommerville lives in Edinburgh where, before retirement, he taught English and Scottish Literature. Writing poems is his attempt to record things in his life that seem to be worth saving often, but not always, employing the discipline of established verse forms. Attendance at a university poetry writing course encourages regular production which might otherwise fall victim to procrastination.

E Wen Wong is fifteen years old and lives in Christchurch, New Zealand. She began writing poetry and prose from a young age and, since then, has had her work featured in Printable Reality, Rattle and Brief Anthologies, among others. She is also on the committee of the New Zealand Poetry Society.

Phil Wood works in a statistics office. He enjoys working with numbers and words. His writing can be found in various publications, including: Allegro, The Open Mouse, Nutshells and Nuggets, London Grip, Ink Sweat and Tears.

Rodney Wood lives in Farnborough, is retired and runs monthly music/poetry nights in Aldershot. He has recently been published in Magma, Amaryllis, Morphrog and Envoi. Last year he published a pamphlet, Dante Called You Beatrice, which The Journal described as “simple artistry: a remarkable achievement”.

Mark Young is the author of over forty books, primarily text poetry but also including speculative fiction, vispo, & art history. His work has been widely anthologized, & his essays & poetry translated into a number of languages. His most recent books are random salamanders, a Wanton Text Production, & Circus economies, from Gradient books of Finland.
.
Back to poet list…

By Michael Bartholomew-Biggs • new poetry, poetry, year 2018 0 • Tags: Michael Bartholomew-Biggs, poetry

### Leave a Reply Cancel reply

You must be logged in to post a comment.